The Meeting

We had this S/NCO meeting after school.

The first part went quite okay. Discussing stuff like Service Day or attendance matters. Then the second part was about something that I figure everyone felt very strongly about, leadership approach. I think that was the most important part of the meeting, but the way someone acted got on my nerves.

Honestly I think you should know that a meeting is a civilized discussion, where we all sit down nicely and conduct ourselves professionally. It does not entail rudely interrupting other people when they are talking, frequently as and when you please. It also does not entail having the need to raise your voice and start shouting. That tends to give the impression that because you cannot get your point across with logic, you do it with volume.

In the end I moderated the meeting.

Firstly lets talk about the way you approached Year 1 foot-drill. You have enough people as it is to run your lesson. Everyone before you has done so with as much or less people. You ask for more people because you think it might make the lesson more efficient. The thing is, asking for a instructor cadet ratio of 1:1 is quite unreasonable, seeing as how you have 30+ cadets, and seeing as how we are still a small new CCA (in this school anyway).

We notify you that you cannot ask Year 2s to help you because they are very busy having to rush to finish foot-drill silver and rescue by the end of the year, and suggest you ask some Year 3s seeing as how they are freer. Then you go on and on about how they would not be able to teach, how they are unreliable, how they would not help at all.

Here’s what the problem was. You didn’t even give them a chance to prove themselves, and you were very judgmental, and are forming prejudices on no observations and evidence. You have absolutely no trust at all in your counterparts or anyone else for that matter. How on earth do you expect to run a CCA when you treat everyone else as idiots?

And then after you complain that the Year 3s won’t be helpful you then go on to complain that you don’t have enough manpower. Then you expect us to be able to solve that. Like what the hell?

Then the discussion moved on to the debate on leadership styles. It was the classic debate on dictatorial versus delegative/democratic leadership. You’ve tried a completely dictatorial approach from day 1. It has failed to work and only resulted in the Year 1 and 2s hating you and doing everything they can to rebel. So we ask you to consider a different approach, yet you don’t even give it a thought or consider trying.

People frequently confuse leadership with being a b**ch.

Forcing people to do stuff by yelling at them, terrifying them, or punishing them if they don’t listen, is rubbish leadership. Heck. It isn’t even leadership. Its intimidation and bullying. Leadership is when you are able to guide people and point them in the right direction because you’ve won their respect and trust. Its about motivating and empowering your people.

Its when people feel that you are approachable and are comfortable to bring their problems to you, because they have begun to trust that you can solve them. Why in the world are you trying to create barriers between you and your people? I have never felt the need to be formal, never felt the need to keep my distance from people I’m supposed to lead. Why have you?

You can’t lead by “talking down” at people, only by “talking to” people. You have to be “one with your people” to be able to lead them, and you’ll get nowhere with the “hierarchical” frame of mind, you’ll get nowhere thinking that you are “superior” to your people. The only way to lead is by treating everyone as your equal.

There is also a huge difference between being strict, and being fierce. You can be strict but you should not be fierce. You should keep a good standard and not allow people to cut corners etc, but you should not tekan people for mistakes. In other words, it is much better to just tell people what’s wrong and let them go fix it rather than tekan them.

The end product of leadership is not to create people that listen to you. That is a terribly simplistic and backward thinking frame of mind. The end product of leadership is to make sure your people will become outspoken, independent thinking people. People with their own opinions, people who will stand up for what they think.

You are there as a leader not to control people, but simply to give them a nudge in the right direction, and to let them figure out the rest. You are there not to command people, but only to guide them a little when they so need it.

We all make mistakes. I made a hell lot of them when I first started. I still do. We all do.

The thing the rest of us took issue with was not so much the mistakes regarding the subject matter as it was your approach to the discussion of these. Throughout the discussion, it didn’t feel like you were taking any of our views seriously at all. It just felt like you dismissed our views without even properly considering them.

The important thing is not about whether or not we make mistakes. The important thing is whether or not we take the time to evaluate seriously the alternative viewpoints that other people have presented. We are all human, and thus subject to the “human condition”, where we will never be able to see thing from a wholly objective and unbiased perspective. It is therefore important that we consider perspectives opposite to our own such that our subjectiveness would have less profound impact on our judgements.

We are not asking you to agree completely with what we think.

We are only asking that you give it some thought.
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I hope that you take me seriously this time and not treat this commentary as just another bunch of text which you can print out and show to everyone to somehow vindicate your argument that I write outrageous nonsense on this blog. Don’t let me down.